The crunch
Subtitle: the scandal of Northern Rock and the escalating credit crisis
By: Alex Brummer
Publisher: Random House Business; Random House Business Books
Published: 2008
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 244
ISBN-13: 9781847940087
Subjects: Financial crises; Bank failures; Bankers; Malpractice; Monetary policy; International finance
Description: "On 9 August 2007 France's largest bank announced that it had had to suspend trading in two huge investment funds it controlled. The same day two German banks revealed that they were close to collapse. A month later came the first run on a British bank since the 1860s as vast queues of worried investors besieged Northern Rock. Within weeks, the Government were being forced to bail out this previously high-flying bank to the tune of [actual symbol not reproducible]30 billion, share prices in other mortgage lenders were plummeting, and alarming news about the state of several of the biggest OS banks was crossing the Atlantic." "In The Crunch, award-winning journalist Alex Brummer painstakingly traces the course of the crisis from its origins in the US 'subprime' market to its explosion on to the international scene. It's a story of greed, mismanagement and dithering in which bankers seeking to make a quick buck, regulators engaged in turf wars and blame-avoidance, and governments paralysed by the sheer scale of the problem all conspired to bring the banking system almost to its knees. It's also a story of victims: the 1.5 million people in the US who have already been thrown out of their houses, the entire population of the UK who have been co-opted to guarantee Northern Rock with billions of pounds of public money, borrowers everywhere who are now finding credit more expensive and harder to get."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-236) and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue: We Want Our Money: When Northern Rock's savers panicked -- -- 1.; title: The Rise and Fall of a Northern Legend: The Rock's rocky history -- -- 2.; title: Mortgaging the Future: The sub-prime bonanza -- -- 3.; title: Pass the Parcel: Banks and debt bundling -- -- 4.; title: When the Lending Stopped: 9 August 2007: The day the markets froze -- -- 5.; title: Aftershock: The implosion at Northern Rock -- -- 6.; title: Asleep at the Wheel: Why the regulators failed -- -- 7.; title: Central Bankers: Who got it right, who got it wrong -- -- 8.; title: Crunch Time: Slamming on the brakes -- -- 9.; title: The Long and Rocky Road: In search of a way forward for Northern Rock -- -- 10.; title: Fall Guys: How the bankers lost their shirts -- -- 11.; title: Painful Lessons: Private greed, public neglect.